AI to Rhino

Scans in AI format are not readable by Rhino. Are exports from Adobe Illustrator different than scans in AI?

Could you provide some more information? Do you have vector geometry in Illustrator and are exporting from that application? The word ‘scan’ could imply bitmap contents though I’m not sure if the ai format carries that. Regardless, to get a bitmap into Rhino you would use a format like jpg, png, …

Thanks for the reply. The output from the scanner(s) that I have tried, one
here in my office and one at a high end copy shop, produced raster based
output in PDF, ai and eps formats. Thought that perhaps importing those
raster based scans into Illustrator might provide the ability to convert
the line art to vector. I talked with a professional user of Illustrator
today after my initial posting and she said that there is no conversion.
Illustrator can “see” the raster image but to create a vector one has to
trace the raster line work. So, no short cuts for getting hand drawn line
art into Rhino.

Illustrator’s Image Trace (also called Live Trace for many previous versions) is an automated conversion/tracing of raster to vector.

The quality of the automatic tracing really depends on the artwork. Typically for use in Rhino or other cad application some cleanup would be required, such as removing excess points, or straightening lines.

Its also possible tracing manually by drawing vectors over the bitmap would be the most effective method.

Can you post a sample of your artwork?

After talking with my friend who works with Illustrator, I decided that it
was simpler to manually in put the line work than to do the tracing. Thanks
for the response though.